Manipulators
I find I only need to go to the big industry trade shows every-other year, but this last year at NAB was almost entirely worthless.
Personally, I go to NAB to SEE WHAT IS NOW AVAILABLE and to FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PRODUCTS. Back in the days of E3 there were two classes of people working the booths: company people and booth-babes. You didn’t expect much from the booth-babes, but they could swipe your badge, hand you some literature on the latest stuff and maybe point you towards a company person for more in-depth info. Plus they were pretty and pretended to not mind talking to endless waves of sweaty geeks.
NAB was at the other end of the spectrum, it’s named for the National Association of Broadcasters after all and is attended by many much-older engineers who don’t mind looking at a nice rack either–if it’s made by Winsted. Professional engineers (and sadly executives) looking for either in-depth technical info and/or the opportunity to schmooze and ‘network’ for contacts, other jobs, vendors, customers… That’s what it was AND IS SUPPOSED TO BE.
Now NAB is worth even less than E3 ever was because the mindless booth-babes are fully clothed and *don’t* have anything more than a flier with a web-address to hand out. Many of the people staffing the booths at this years NAB may have actually been full-time, regular employees of the companies–if you count lobotomized members of the marketing (redundant?) or maybe janitorial departments. As often as not they didn’t even have meaningful knowledge of their own company’s product line.
Again and again I’d ask somebody for information on something and they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I’d ask them for at least the brochure on it, and at best they’d only have the generic full-line brochure (no specific information whatsoever). Next they’d offer to swipe my badge to get me the info, but as often as not they didn’t even understand what division the product I was asking about fell under, so they couldn’t specify it in the swipe system.
Even when one of these smiling badge-swiping simians could find the checkbox for the specific item I was wondering about the end result was not a detailed brochure in the mail the week after NAB; it was AN EMAIL WITH A WEB-LINK TO THE GENERIC INFO ON THEIR WEB PAGE. So what the HELL was the point of going to NAB at all??? Going to Vegas, sure, but I could’ve just browsed websites in the hotel’s business center, maybe printed a couple pages and had the same benefit as spending 2-3 days wandering around the show floors…
When everybody in the industry solemnly agrees the Internet killed this trade-show in 4 or so years, remember it is because THE TRADE SHOW ITSELF HELPED. When I walk up to a booth to find out more about something that I may well be about to spend several hundred thousand dollars on I want to speak to somebody involved in the design or AT LEAST the support of the product in question. NOT whichever vaguly attractive secretary some executive thought might put out.
Especially in broadcasting/production/VFX/post, we don’t have a Gizmodo.com to point out all the newest stuff, we have NAB–where companies made the conscious choice this year to NOT send their engineers, only MARKETING SHMUCKS (and executives… thank god!).
Perhaps flatteringly, Apple may be reading my thoughts. It would be nice to think so, but I believe they are just smart enough to stay a step ahead on a lot of important matters. Here’s a comment I sent to the Daring Fireball author regarding some iPhone 2.0 chaff that was shooting around the web at the time 2.0 was announced. This particular post didn’t go anywhere, and the implementation Apple just announced is even better than I anticipated. Read on, with small edits to put in context to a standalone post.
Getting back into the “making stuff for the web” kick. Mostly trying to get my creative chops back up to speed. Lots to do, lots to try.
Since my favorite aviation forum turns out to have been run by idiots who just lost their entire message-center database and didn’t have external backups (and don’t apparently know about drivesavers.com) I’m going to post my $0.02 worth here.
I was uneasy with how quickly the crew were lauded as heroes, long before the flight data recorder had even been looked at. There is no doubt that they did an excellent job given the situation they found themselves in (something of a British Airways specialty, if you remember the 747 and volcanic ash incident), but I’m reserving my adulation until the cause of the situation is understood.
The first reports of complete loss of power implied a dead cockpit as well, I’m guessing this is an idiot reporter’s misunderstanding of what a pilot would mean by loss of power.
It is now fairly clear that the engines failed to respond to requests for additional thrust, both through the autothrottle and the manual throttles. That there didn’t seem to be any indication of the lack of response to the autothrottle requests is probably some kind of failure in the airplane’s system (or the system’s design). Had the crew been alerted to the abnormal response to ordered thrust increases earlier they may have had time to alter the glideslope, change configuration to extend the glide, or even possibly solve the reason for lack of thrust.
I do not believe the airplanes systems failed catastrophically, I.E. were not delivering orders or were ‘crashed’. It seems far more likely there was a problem with fuel contamination or icing in the engine. There is also a potential failure here of systems that should’ve warned of the icing possibility or contamination… or of the systems designed to prevent those problems.
If my postulations are correct some systems failures played a major part in the crash, and pilot skill played a major part in mitigation of the crash… BUT, what if the crew had been more hands-on with the approach? Would they have noticed the disconnect sooner? If they’d been monitoring engine performance the way a 2nd officer used to (instead of relying on the airplane’s systems to report a problem) might they have realized something was wrong? I don’t know… but I would like to.
I worked my way through college as a commissioned salesman. I wasn’t good at it for two reasons: I was honest and I thought too much. I simply wasn’t able to slime and dumb myself down to being a good salesperson. But I feel I understand salespeople better than most, and because of that I despise them.
I have to deal with some real doozies for work, but it’s from a position of some power and I enjoy making sure to squeeze out every last cent I can and to catch and punish any BS they pull. I had thought car dealers were the top of the scuz pyramid, but because I’ve bought my last two cars through fleet dealers–with a little guidance from a great site, I usually don’t interact with them. Though that opinion was reconfirmed when I recently took a test drive, the salesperson was much like I had been (won’t last long) but I was damn near to throttling the ’sales manager’ who inserted himself into the conversation.
But even the worst used-car salesman I’ve ever dealt with is nothing compared to the horrorshow of humanity that seems to be real-estate agents. Luckily there are also some great ways to limit interactions with them, too… but eventually your luck will run out. It’s at that point I remember learning that there are three types of homicide: criminal, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Some background: in Southern California right now the housing market is falling fast, after the bursting of a large bubble. There is a constant stream of news about declining home sales and median prices. The fall seems to be accelerating as people default on stupid loans, fewer people can get loans, and new housing continues to be completed. Then there is the current writer’s strike (and looming actor’s strike) which are a grave threat to the local economy. Add on for good measure the sub-prime banking crisis and other bad economic news (just heard unemployment is rising again) and people are talking about RECESSION.
So with all that in mind I decide to try to wade into the market (my apartment lease is up and I’m tired of living 20+ minutes from everything). I notice a place on my drive to work, it has a tacky sign about “Condo’s from the 500s”… but I’m encouraged when they replace that sign as the market stalls. So even though the place doesn’t look very good from the highway I stop in for a look. It’s nicer up close and inside is even better. I get my first whiff of stupidity when the salesgirl tries to imply that they’re already half sold then immediately tries to get me commit to a unit any unit to place an offer on. It’s almost amusing dealing with stupid people who think they’re smart… But I decide that with this obvious lack of people beating a path to their door, the sign change, and the new construction being completed across the street maybe I can get a reasonably good deal.
But I know better than to do anything without leaving first, sleeping on it and reading the offer forms. I also notice there’s also a place (about 50% sold) a block away for about the same asking price of the place I’m interested in but with much nicer amenities (seriously, didn’t know some of those amenities could be built into Condo’s). So I make an offer (being careful NOT to initial that they can take however much of my deposit they want or that I have no legal recourse) for what the place is worth *to me* given all those market conditions and the nicer place down the street. I make sure to get the offer in before the next meeting as asked by the salesgirls to help get a quicker response.
It takes 3 fucking weeks–after 4 promises that I’ll be called before X-PM on Y-day–to get a reply. Gets to the point that the salesgirls will not answer nor return my call. (Yet through that three weeks their mortgage people call me every week…) Anyway, after the passing of the 4th deadline I start calling every number I can find for the place, and finally manage to track down the broker–who dismisses my offer out of hand AS he admits I am the first AND ONLY offer they’ve had on any of the 21 units!
Seriously, WTF?! But they now have a big balloon tethered to the roof (just like a car dealership!!) proclaiming “100% Financing”. I’m sure that’ll attract quality offers…
And the thing is, that experience is almost less annoying than the other agents I’ve dealt with these last couple weeks. There’re all these new Condo’s going up, and most are unfortunately represented through a traditional real-estate agent instead of anything direct. So the developer is already paying them a percentage to sell, but you go to these open houses and they have somebody–from the same office of course–who wants to be “your” agent and get another 3% of the sales price. Oh yeah, they’re sworn to represent your interests… right. Because your one-time sale means just as much to their office as the developers’ millions in business. And even though the system is setup so they cost themselves $30 in commission for every $1000 they save you “they’ll fight to get you the best price”. Moral of this side-rant: USE REDFIN if you have to use an agent–get 2% back!
I’ll bet none of the current real-estate agents have even worked in a down market… It’s been up, up and away for 10 years in SoCal and the bubble for the last couple years bought them all new German luxo-yachts. I can’t wait to start seeing Porsche Cayennes being towed away by repo men! The pleasure of the rude awakening to come almost makes up for me still being in my crappy apartment…
BTW, PJ correctly pointed out the apostrophe in Condo’s is correct–because it is an abbreviation.
Seems like a great way to get speaker wire across the living room.
Speaking of home theater, Sound and Vision has a thorough comparison of the current best LCD vs. the best Plasma. Some worry about lifespan and burn-in on plasma, but I’ve seen burn in on quite a few LCDs too. Mostly computer monitors but also others. One of these days I’ll find a technical explanation for something that we were led to believe wasn’t possible…
I guess a lot has changed since this blog was technically active. One thing I decided to do in the last year was forsake a decent vacation to Hawaii or somesuch, and instead my wife and I enrolled in the Trading Academy. It was a strange route we took to bring us to the point where we decided to trade stocks, but I think it was worth it.
On September 6, 1970, Islamic terrorists attempted the near-simultaneous hijacking of 4 separate jetliners as they took off fully fueled for a flight across the Atlantic.
3 of the 4 jets were successfully hijacked by people who had smuggled weapons aboard.
The 4th jet was an El Al flight. Then, (as now) they put more emphases on the safety of their passengers and flights then squeezing out every cent of profit. There were intended to be 4 hijackers on that flight but El Al flagged two of them as suspicious so they didn’t make it aboard. When the two hijackers onboard made the attempt multiple armed Israeli sky marshals responded and with a lot of luck (a grenade was dropped but did not explode) the only death was one of the hijackers.
The two denied boarding on the El Al flight instead boarded a Pan Am flight, there was an attempt by El Al to warn of their suspicions about the two but it was poorly relayed and ineffective.
All three of the hijacked planes landed in the middle-east, eventually every single passenger was set free but the aircraft (and a fourth hijacked later) were destroyed.
As I read this account last night I couldn’t help but seethe with rage. WTF is wrong with “us” in ‘the west’ that what little we remember we manage to take the wrong lessons from? (The first WTC bombing comes to mind as well–anti crash-through barriers and vehicle inspection but not better evacuation training or response planing.)
We threw a couple dollars at screening and x-ray and assured ourselves that everything was fine. Did we put air marshalls on trans-Atlantic flights? No, we pretended that doing the least possible must have resolved the problem and then forgot about the incidents.
Do you think TODAY there are air marshalls on every trans-Atlantic flight? Except on El Al, I mean…
About 40 years from now I fully expect somebody to be reading an account of September 11, 2001 and slapping their head in disbelief that something fairly similar was allowed to happen yet again, killing an order of magnitude more people.
In the meantime I highly recommend Emergency, Crisis on the Flight Deck (2nd edition) written by Stanley Stewart. I’ve read a lot about airline disasters and incidents but this had many that were news to me, and it is quite powerfully written.
Wow. I think the experience of Golden Compass is best described as 180 degrees different from The Legend of Narnia (AKA The Passion of the Lion).
The basic premise, the core ideas driving at the heart of the story are far more interesting than Narnia’s. But the execution, dear god. The way this movie was executed should lead to the execution of every writer and executive that worked on it, and the execution of the director should be botched and last 113 agonizing minutes.
The exposition is clumsy and damn-near endless (including a long clip at the end spelling out the need for the sequels) but the worst feature has to be the acting. Even the CG polar bear overacts dreadfully. As does every other single character except possibly Nicole Kiddman (maybe it’s the botox). After setting this trend the director makes sure you don’t miss a “nuance” by framing most shots so the face of the actor EMOTING fills the screen. Sam Eliot’s a great actor, when properly cast and with a director who doesn’t hit him in the face with the camera lens every other shot (the intervening shots are 1-shots from below, making him HEROIC). The Seafaring king reminds me of DeNiro’s mincing Pirate Captain in Stardust but somehow LESS SUBTLE.
The only thing this movie really has going for it are the visuals. There are truly extraordinary vehicles that go far beyond tired steampunk to something actually original, especially the vehicles of the Magisterium. The CG animal companions aren’t bad, and the polar bear fight towards the end is surprisingly powerful, if again overacted… by CG bears…
Having seen it I can certainly understand all the negative reviews it has gotten, but not the positive ones. Ebert gave it 4 starts for crying out loud. Maybe if you have an especially stupid or impressionable child… this would probably entertain and (more importantly) shut it up.
I suppose the underlying (if somewhat under-emphasized) message to question authority would be good for any young spawn to be exposed to… but I doubt the message carries much weight when it’s set in an explicitly fantasy world and the audience starts to root for the misbehaving little brat to fall down a well. Far more clearly than question authority the message the movie is likely to impart is LIE *alot* and everything will work out for the best.
Working in VFX I usually stay around through end credits, and I am certain I know some people who worked on this (who I’d like to congratulate–as I said, visually it is stunning in places) but I couldn’t stomach sitting through the end song to save my life. If I’d been handcuffed to the chair I’d have chewed off my own hand to get away. This movie couldn’t be more clear in its blatant attempts to copy the success of Lord of the Rings and Narnia, right down to trying to do a Lord of the Rings original song that relates to the movie. Except, that is, without anybody with talent writing (or performing) the song. “Lyraaa… LYRA, her spirit walks beSIDE her, LYRIA!” OUCH! Just bit into my wrist tendons to stop me from going through and typing out any more of that drivel… that was pretty nearly the complete lyrics though… again and again.
So when I saw a poorly informed blurb claiming Vista is 50% slower than XP I wrote it off as BS. But then a couple people sent it to me so I looked into it in more depth…
Original Story.
And I confirm my call of BULLSHIT. CIO Today? Devil Mountain Software? It’s like Gartner group FUD but without even the name of Gartner to back it. It’s transparently a company trying to make a name for themselves by saying something controversial and hoping nobody actually looks into what they said. Which isn’t likely given the claim…
1st, their benchmarks are *Office Tasks*. Exactly what modern computer can’t run even the latest Office (which is an improvement, over OfficeXP, BTW) blazing fast? But if you string together a macro of every action in every Office program… you have… a fucking worthless benchmark!
2nd, There have already been plenty of comparisons of XP to Vista in 3D games and even 3D apps, far more relevant to any of us following IT for VFX… They show a slight difference, often going both ways but with a slight edge to XP.
3rd, There is always going to be somebody afraid of the next thing (Gartner / CIO Today), these same people said the same things about XP (and they were right, **initially** and Win2k–where they couldn’t have been more wrong, even when it first came out it was an order of magnitude better than NT4).
–Newsflash: new OSs will have bugs in addition to the improvements… but eventually the bugs get worked out, then you just have improvements. The security improvements made XP a must-have (eventually), those plus virtualization plus other improvements will eventually make Vista must have too, hopefully around SP1. We’ll see.
But the fact that we know people who are now successfully using Vista64 for Lightwave far outweighs this ‘Devil Mountain’ BS.